Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. Navy veteran can be barred
from owning a gun because of a 1968 misdemeanor conviction over
a fistfight, a federal appeals court ruled.

A three-judge panel in Washington upheld a lower-court
ruling “which found ‘no constitutional impediment’ to including
common-law misdemeanants” within the federal firearms ban. The
lower court observed that “the right secured by the Second
Amendment is not unlimited,” U.S. Circuit Judge David Tatel
wrote in yesterday’s opinion.

The federal ban applies to several categories of people,
including fugitives, undocumented aliens, those who are judged
mentally incompetent or those who have been convicted of
felonies or certain kinds of misdemeanors, including ones
involving domestic violence.

The ruling comes amid a national debate over gun rights
after the Dec. 14 shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults
at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school by a man wielding a
semi-automatic rifle outfitted with high-capacity magazines.

Jefferson Wayne Schrader, 64, of Cleveland, Georgia, sued
to challenge the ban in 2010 after a companion tried to buy him
a shotgun and Schrader tried to purchase a handgun in two
separate transactions.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation blocked the shotgun
purchase when the National Instant Criminal Background Check
computer system flagged Schrader’s July 1968 conviction for
misdemeanor assault. When informed of the rejection, Schrader
canceled his handgun order.

Street Gang

The assault occurred in Annapolis, Maryland, while
Schrader, then 20, was serving in the Navy and encountered a
member of a street gang who had previously assaulted him,
according to his complaint.

Schrader punched his assailant and was convicted of common-law assault and battery and fined $100. The court imposed no
jail time. Schrader went on to serve a tour of duty in Vietnam
and received an honorable discharge. He had no other brushes
with the law, except for one traffic violation, he said in his
complaint.

Schrader said that before 2008 he had bought guns from
dealers at least five times without encountering difficulties
with background checks.

“I’ve been buying and selling guns all these years and I
didn’t know anything about this,” he said yesterday in a phone
interview. “It’s a very poor decision. It sounds like they’re
making it up as they go along.”

Alan Gura, Schrader’s attorney, said that a further appeal
is likely. “This is not something that ends today,” he said
yesterday in a phone interview.

Federal Law

Under federal law, people are disqualified from gun
possession or ownership if they have been convicted of
misdemeanors punishable under state law by more than two years
in prison, according to Gura.

At the time of Schrader’s offense, the state of Maryland
didn’t specify a maximum penalty for common-law assault and
battery. This meant “the Maryland court could have sentenced
Schrader to more than two years’ imprisonment,” putting him
into a category that tripped the gun-possession ban, according
to Tatel’s ruling.

“It’s silly to suggest that Congress intended to prohibit
someone convicted of common-law misdemeanor from owning
firearms,” Gura said. “There’s no way Mr. Schrader’s in the
same category as serious felons.”

Gura argued a successful 2008 challenge to the District of
Columbia’s handgun ban before the U.S. Supreme Court. The
court’s 5-4 ruling established that the Constitution protects
individual gun rights.

Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice
Department, declined to comment on yesterday’s ruling.

The case is Schrader v. Holder, 11-cv-5352, U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia (Washington).